Arch Enemy (15 page)

“I
don't know,” said the subchief of security, who was the ranking manager in the office that day. “That's a lot of entries to go through.”

Lisa Frieze could tell from the moment she laid eyes on him that he wasn't going to be helpful. He struck her right away as the kind of person who was just running out the clock on his workday—almost over, at five-thirty—and, in a broader sense, his life. She would bet that he made it into this job on seniority alone. And any extra work, no matter how important, just got in the way of doing nothing.

“Plus, you don't have a warrant.”

“I was hoping,” Frieze said, rubbing her temple, “that you might cooperate with our investigation. That you'd be interested to know whether there's a vulnerability in campus security.”

“That's really more of an internal matter.”

“Maybe I should come back tomorrow and talk to the chief then? He might like to know how helpful you've been.”

He exhaled, signaling that he was not at all happy with the situation. “Fine. I'll sign off on it for you.”

She waited half an hour, which she guessed was at least fifteen minutes longer than necessary, until he came back to her with a printed packet of more than a hundred pages.

“Here,” he said, dropping it on the counter. “The door access logs for three days leading to the incident. Here you got your door codes, the date and time stamp, and the key code. I'm going to need you to sign this.” He handed her a pen and a clipboard with a form attached, and she scrawled her name on the bottom.

She then looked at the packet, at the rows upon rows of numbers and alphanumeric codes, all blending together.

Today was not the day for this.

“Thanks,” she said, leaving with the packet in hand.

She checked her phone as she left the building. No sign from Conley.

She scoffed at herself.
Pathetic
, waiting for him to call. She could really use a drink. And there was someone who actually wanted to have that drink with her.

She searched for a name in her phone's address book and made the call. It rang.

“Hello?”

“Bryce? I think I'll take you up on your offer after all.”

I
t was morning by the time the ragtag group of raiders arrived at their destination, with Morgan and Yolande in tow. The end of their trek was at a camp in the jungle, a mile off the road. It was all tents and makeshift shelters, populated by women, children, and men too old or crippled to fight, who greeted those returning with whoops of joy. Some of them came to greet the freed slaves, too, embracing them with tears in their eyes. Families reunited. Morgan felt a twinge for Alex.

The raiders weren't bothering to keep guns on Morgan and Yolande anymore. It was clear to their captors that the two were enemies of their enemies.

Whether that meant they were friends remained to be seen.

People turned to look as Morgan walked into the camp. The children followed them, staring without any sign of embarrassment. He figured white people weren't too common around these parts. He and Yolande were instructed to sit down on a damp log in front of a fire, where a young woman gave them wooden bowls filled with some kind of corn porridge. Bland as it was, to Morgan, who hadn't had a proper meal in days, it was as good as any steak Jenny had ever grilled.

“I think feeding us is a sign they don't plan on killing us,” Morgan said.

“I wish they would give me a damn cigarette.”

After they ate, they were taken to a man Yolande identified as their leader, sitting on a rock near the middle of the camp. He was nearing forty, hard and sinewy, with a fresh wound on his face that had been washed but not dressed. They sat down in front of him, a group of young armed guards. Two older men seemed to be there in a more advisory capacity. He exchanged a few words with Yolande, among which Morgan caught
Américain
and
Anglais
. Then the man spoke in English, accented but passable.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Morgan opted for the truth, more or less. “I'm here looking for a man. Goes by the name of Mr. White.” Yolande remained quiet—Morgan intuited she didn't want them to know of her connection with General Jakande.

The two men turned to the leader and huddled in to speak. The leader held his hand up for silence. “Are you friends of this Mr. White?”

The correct answer was clear from his tone. It happened to also be the true one. “No. I'm here to make him answer for his crimes. To stop the flow of guns.”

“The guns going to Madaki?”

“Yes. I'm here to stop them from reaching him.”

“The guns have already reached him. I think you are not doing a very good job.” His face erupted into a broad grin and then into laughter. With that, Morgan knew he was in. “I am Etienne Dimka. Leader of this group. We are a resistance army. Our country's military will not rid us of Madaki, so we will do it ourselves.”

“I am Anthony Bevelacqua,” Morgan said. “I was sent here by my country to capture the arms dealer known as Mr. White.”

Dimka grimaced in response. “The great and powerful United States sends one man?”

“This is not strictly official. Still, I have some support in the country. I may be able to get some help. But I need to get in touch with my people, and I don't have any way to contact them.”

Dimka rubbed his chin. “I have something that may work.” He spoke a few words in French to one of the younger men present. The man ran off with a purposeful gait. Dimka turned his attention back to Morgan. “I know where this White is, and his weapons. We hurt one of the men from the mine until he told us. He is with Madaki. He made his base in an old mansion, twenty miles from here. His army is camped on the land around it.”

Not good.

“We are planning an attack in the morning,” he said. “We have numbers. There are three hundred here in the camp, plus the slaves we freed last night, but there are more spread throughout the countryside. Madaki has about four hundred men with him. We number more than one thousand.” Dimka puffed up his chest with pride.

Poorly armed and poorly trained
, thought Morgan. They needed some serious tactics to pull this off.

“Do you know the land where you're engaging the enemy?” Morgan asked. “Do you know if there are sentries posted?”

“They have lookouts,” said Dimka. “But we will approach in the dark, like in the mine. We will move silently.”

Morgan remembered how many losses they sustained in the mine—two for every man they took down, and that was with overwhelming force on their side. They wouldn't have that at Madaki's camp.

“With your permission,” said Morgan, “I'd like to go, along with my guide, ahead of the group. I'd like to take a look at this place. I might be able to advise you about how to use your forces to gain an advantage.”

Dimka frowned. He was about to speak when the young man who had run off came back with a familiar handheld device. Dimka took it and handed it to Morgan. “Here you go, Mr. Bevelacqua.” It was the sat phone that had been stolen from him on the road two days before. It had been Dimka's men, then, who ambushed them. Morgan hoped he wouldn't be recognized. “Will this work?”

Morgan turned it on. The electronic display lit up. Batteries charged, strong signal. “That'll do it.”

“About your request,” he said. “I am still not certain you are not a spy. I do not know you will not betray me if I let you move ahead. But perhaps I will send you with an advance team that will keep an eye on you. Is this acceptable?”

“It's fine,” Morgan replied.

“Good. Go on. Contact your people. Get what help you can.”

With a deferential bow, Morgan stood up and walked away, followed by Yolande. The children, a gaggle of about a dozen assorted girls and boys who had been watching the meeting from a distance, resumed following them.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Yolande was impassive. “He is a dreamer and a fool. They will be massacred.”

“This is your chance to leave. I can have my people contact Jakande and send someone for you.”

“I do not run from a battle.” She broke away from him. “I am going to go find a cigarette.”

Morgan found a quiet corner by a grove where he sat in the shade of a palm tree, waving flies away from his face. The children, still on his tail, peeked at him from behind a tent.

Morgan turned on the sat phone. “Zeta, this is Cobra. Come in. Over.” He gave it a few seconds and tried again.

“Cobra, this is Zeta.” Diana Bloch, relief breaking through even her stony timbre. “We thought we'd lost you.”

He related the events since the ambush, telling her about Dimka and his militia. “They're attacking Madaki's camp in the morning,” he said. “I'm going with them and try to make my way to White. It's going to be tricky. I need tactical support for extraction.”

“General Jakande has secured air transportation and weapons for Bishop and the others. This is an in-and-out mission.”

“Understood,” said Morgan.

“I mean it,” said Bloch. “You owe no allegiance to these people. You do not have to fight their war for them.”

Morgan looked out into the busy camp, the displaced families, fighting for their land, for their lives. “They're a means to an end. They'll serve as a distraction while I get to White. That's all.”

“Good. I'll alert Bishop to have the tactical team on alert. Keep me updated.”

Morgan terminated the call. As he reclined against the tree trunk, he heard rustling from a nearby bush. He looked, expecting to see a child, but instead, it was Yolande, close enough to have heard every word. She was now turning her back on him.

“Hey,” Morgan, standing. “Hey! Yolande!”

But she didn't turn around as she stomped away from him, digging her heels into the muddy ground.

L
isa Frieze walked into the FBI field office regretting the night before. She screwed up her eyes to block out the stray images of sloppy drunken make outs with Bryce Vickery that wafted through her mind, but she was finding it hard to focus on anything.

“What truck hit you on the way to work?” Gus Loyola asked her as she walked in.

“I'd rather not talk about it.”

She sat in her cubicle with the papers she had gotten from the university the day before, wondering what to make of it.

She had a list of what person held each keycard, identified by a code. She also had a series of maps that showed the code for each of the doors, which she figured out were a combination of four letters or numbers designating the building plus three more designating the particular door.

She wasn't sure whether the subchief of security had given her a printout rather than digital documents out of spite or incompetence. If it had been spite, well, then, kudos to him. He had succeeded in making her life difficult.

She marked the doors that led into the steam tunnels, which inconveniently all had different building codes, with a dot at the end of the row of data. Then she went through each of the people who had accessed any of those doors, highlighting each with a different color.

Her phone beeped. A text message from Conley, finally.

 

Can we meet?

 

She texted back.

 

Half an hour, outside FBI offices.

 

She returned to her work. It was stupid busywork, but sometimes that was what investigations consisted of.

She was barely a quarter done when Chambers poked his head out of his office. He asked Gus, “Is Frieze in yet?”

“I'm here,” she said.

“My office. Now.”

“Oof,” said Gus as she walked past him. “In trouble?”

She exhaled. “Good it ain't.”

“Lotsa luck.”

Frieze knocked and entered Chambers's office.

“Close the door,” he said.

She did, and sat across from him. He steepled his fingers against his mouth, his chair turned 90 degrees away from her, as if he were reflecting on what he was going to say. Maybe it was his way of torturing her.

“I got a call from someone at an elevator company of all places,” said Chambers. “Do you know what they told me? That you've been harassing their people about an accident that happened last Friday.”

“I've hardly been harassing anyone. I just had an informal talk with a—”

“Tell me something, Frieze. Did you use your capacity as an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to gain undue access to a case you were not assigned to?”

“I might have mentioned that I was an agent.”

“
Might
have? Cut the weasel words, Frieze. Did you or didn't you?”

“I did.”

“Would this informal talk have anything to do with a certain accountant with a tongue-twister name?”

“No, sir. I was just following up on a lead, sir.”

“A lead about the case you're working?”

“No, sir.”

He banged on his desk. “Then tell me, Frieze. What in the
hell
were you doing there?”

“Chambers, this wasn't just an accident. Dominic Watson was murdered.”

“The local police, who actually have jurisdiction over this case, disagree.”

“They don't have the full picture. The circumstances are extremely suspicious.”

“An elevator crashed. End of story!” Chambers yelled.

“A technician came for a service visit that the elevator company has no record of one week before Watson's death. And the camera feeds are just
coincidentally
missing for that day.”

“We are done talking about this,” said Chambers. “I don't want you near this elevator case. You're on thin ice. Do your job. That's an order.”

 

Frieze walked out of the elevator to meet Conley, who was waiting for her in the lobby. She was angry. She was determined. The bitch would not get away with it, and Frieze would prove Chambers wrong.

“I wanted to show you something I found on—”

“Never mind,” she said through gritted teeth. “Let's go find out what Nina Cotter is hiding.”

“Now?”

Frieze was in the mood to lash out. No better candidate than the bitch who had caused the mess. “Yes, now.”

In her car, Frieze decided she'd come clean. “She called my boss.”

“What?”

“Nina Cotter. She called my goddamn boss. Gave him some bull that we were harassing her.”

“And so the plan is to go back and
actually
harass her?”

“More or less.”

“I don't want to be the one to point out the obvious, but what if she calls your boss again?”

“I'll make sure she doesn't.”

“How?”

“I'll put the fear of God into her, that's how.”

Frieze pulled into the parking space outside the building that housed the Hornig offices, tires squealing, and pressed ahead as Conley stayed behind to put change in the meter.

He caught up with her in the lobby, where she was already flashing her badge to the receptionist.

“FBI. I'm here to see Nina Cotter.”

“Hold on just a minute, ma'am,” she said. In no mood, Frieze jumped over the turnstile next to the reception desk.

“Ma'am. Ma'am! Hey!” the receptionist shouted after her. “You can't do that!”

“Stop me,” she yelled back, pressing the elevator button. She looked back to see that Conley was doing the same. He exchanged a few words with the girl and jogged over to her.

“I think she's dialing security,” said Conley.

“I just need enough time to get to Cotter. She won't dare call security on me then.”

The doors slid open, and Frieze led the way into the elevator. She pressed the button for six, and the doors closed before security could reach them.

“So, got anything in terms of specifics on the plan?” he asked. “You know, just so I can play along.”

“No.” She was furious beyond self-doubt. “I'm winging it.”

“Oh,” said Conley. “Good to know.”

She held on to her righteous energy, trying not to let it deflate. A cartoon carrot played on the elevator's video screen. Some kind of ad for toothpaste or something.

The elevator reached the sixth floor, went straight past it, and the display marked
7
. The car showed no sign of slowing down.

“What the—” said Frieze. She pressed the button for the sixth floor again, but the elevator kept going up, now at the eighth floor.

The name
Dominic Watson
played vaguely in her mind about half a second before the words came on the screen, black on white.

 

H
ELLO
, L
ISA
F
RIEZE
.